Analogical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension in Grades 4, 5, and 6: A Continuing Study of Relationships.

Cramer, Eugene H.

A study investigated whether students' abilities to solve verbal analogy problems can be increased through teacher-generated direct instruction and whether increased ability in solving verbal analogies is directly related to increased reading comprehension ability. Subjects, 90 children (30 from fourth, fifth, and sixth grades), participated in either a treatment or a control group condition. Teachers of treatment groups had participated in a two-day inservice workshop dealing with the nine categories of verbal analogies developed in previous studies and with possible teaching strategies for solving verbal analogy problems. Treatment group teachers spent approximately 30 minutes each week on verbal analogies instruction from October through March. Results indicated that direct teacher generated instruction does appear to increase students' ability to reason analogically, but that the relationship between this ability and increased reading comprehension scores was not statistically significant except when the data from individual groups were combined to form two large groups. In this case, all correlations were statistically significant on both pre- and posttest assessments, suggesting that analogical reasoning is an important component of reading comprehension. (Tables of findings are included.) (EL)